I refute that our rights are limited to what people, or some of them, think we “need” to have. The “Bill of Rights” says noting about these right being applied “only in time of need” but says, our right, what our rights are… and they are not based on current need.

Who would be the one to say which rights we “NEED”? Nobody. Our rights are what they are, and this is not based on someone thoughts about what we need. That includes rights other than the right to “bear arms”.

Most recently, in just the last couple of days, I have started to hear people say that our founding fathers did not intend us to have the kind of weapons that are available.. They rationalized that since the founding father did not know about modern weapons the could not have intended us to have the rights to them…

To this I have several things to say. First, they did intend that we have a militia, which is basically a citizen army, which means we would have to be able to obtain weapons that could be used by the Military. At one point in time the Supreme Court upheld the laws against short barreled weapons, say a shotgun that had the barrel cut down, with the reasoning that by cutting down the barrel it would render that same shotgun useable by a military and thus it was not in keeping with use by a Militia.

The second thing this persons statement brings to mind is that the founding fathers also did not envision T.V., Telephones, Telegraph, Electric typewriters, computers, the Internet and a whole bunch of things that have been invented since then.. Does this mean that we only have rights in relation to things they knew about? Would our free speech NOT include the Internet?

Over the years we have gotten these answers from the Supreme Court each time they have adapted their ruling to changes in technology. The rights against unreasonable search have been applied to things like our mail, the phone,and to some degree our vehicles. The courts have applied the concepts to things that our founding fathers probably did not see coming. What if they had said that there was no need for privacy rights to cover a wire going out of your house, and so anybody could tap your phone without a warrant? They did not do this, as they reasoned that there were situations where a person had a certain “expectation of privacy” in which case a warrant was needed.

The “Bill of Right” says what they are, and the Supreme Court interprets what the “Bill of Rights” says… Recent decisions by the court have dismantled some of the most repressive firearms law in the country. Law that violated, or infringed on, our right to bear arms.

So, to those of you who feel that we, the law abiding citizen, have not rights to bear arms you would have to change the constitution so that we only have the rights that YOU think we should have…

On the other hand you should keep in mind that idea that we got the present constitution, and government, when they decided that changes must be made to the “Articles of Confederation” that formed the framework of our first national government. They were just supposed to make changes to it. Instead that gave us a completely different organization.